Aart van Harten

Prof. Dr. A. van Harten (In Memoriam)

Aart van Harten was a full time professor in Management Science and Logistics at the University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands. He had a Ph.D. degree from the University of Utrecht (1975). Some of his main affiliations were assistant professor at the Free University of Amsterdam, associate professor at the University of Utrecht and Technological Institute, Northwestern University, Evanston, U.S.A., head of a research and development group and member of the management team of DIV, the software development branch of Rijkswaterstaat combined with a part-time professorship at the Utrecht University. He was working at OMPL since 1988 with a group of more than 10 staff members and research assistants. He was leading several projects in co-operation with industry and was research director of the faculty Technology and Management concerning the Industrial Engineering programme Operations Management and Performance Control and the Management Studies programme Innovation Management. Prof. van Harten was one of the founders of the research school Beta. In this position, he has built up the University of Twente branch of Beta. In 2006, he was granted the title of Beta Fellow.

Prof van Harten passed away at the age of 57 years old on December 13, 2006. With him, we loose a great man, who showed an incredible mental strength during his illness. His continual optimism combined with realism has made an indelible impression on all that have had the privilege to meet him.

Scientific Area

His interests included the applications of operations research and the use of quantitative methods in operations management. Some main topics were hierarchical decomposition methods for maintenance planning and production planning, efficient clustering of maintenance activities in view of set-up reduction, optimal strategies for product recovery management, (al)location problems in reverse logistics, large scale simulations of production and distribution systems, control structures for automised transport systems, dynamic job assignment and scheduling with look-ahead ( both for multi-modal transport and multiple machine systems), vehicle routing with time windows and stochastic travelling times due to congestion, decision support for airline network development and arrival/departure banks at main hub-airports. Research results were intensively disseminated to industry and used extensively in the scientific education of students in the logistics management stream at the department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Twente, for which he had a first responsibility.

Indications of Scientific Activities

He was a member of the editorial board of Bedrijfskunde (Kluwer Journal on Management in Dutch) and several scientific (steering, advisory, reviewing) boards, a.o. NOBO (Dutch Organisation for Business Research), OLS (Underground Logistical Systems researchgroup), ECIM (Euregio Center for Integrated Manufacturing). He organised a number of international conferences and workshops. In terms of publications he generated the following output:Intern. Scientific Publ.: >50National Scientific Publ.: +/- 10Professional Publ.: >25